


Gone and Found

by troiing



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Humor, Sleepy Cuddles, because naked-in-bed fluff is all that matters to me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 12:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5163692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troiing/pseuds/troiing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Late night inconveniences, teasing, and cuddles with Femshep and Liara.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gone and Found

**Author's Note:**

> It's my first time writing a proper story for this fandom, so I definitely appreciate any and all feedback!

Shepard sleeps restlessly at best, these days. Liara, something more like a stone.

That's not entirely true. Shepard has decided that Liara has that rare ability to resolve to wake up at a certain time, and then to actually do it without any outside aid; she just doesn't seem to execute the ability when she's sharing Shepard’s bed. Shepard isn’t sure if the two are mutually exclusive or not, but that’s a matter she has little interest in testing. Their time together feels fleeting at best, and special at all times; if the asari makes herself willfully absent from the outside world when they’re together, Shepard can hardly blame her.

And if she’s desperate, even while sleeping, to keep contact with a lover who has a tendency to take up every inch of space given to her at some point in the night, Shepard won’t blame her for that, either. After all, it’s a pleasant thing to wake up to, Liara T’soni draped over or pressed against you, no matter that the outcome is sometimes awkward at best.

Case in point: Shepard, sprawled on her stomach, hugging a pillow and blanketed from the waist down; Liara, unabashedly using Shepard’s lower back as a pillow, arm draped across her thighs.

It's the shivering that wakes the commander. She groans, lifting her head a little and twisting around for a bleary-eyed look at the asari in the pale glow of the fish tank. She's on top of the blankets, curled into a compact little ball and burrowing restlessly into the bedding and Shepard’s body, but evidently dead to the world.

It _is_ cool. The draft on her bare back is evidence enough of Liara’s discomfort. But Shepard has always preferred a cooler sleeping environment, and truth be told, the blankets make it more than bearable. 

“Liara,” Shepard says groggily, twisting a little more, making a noble effort to roll over without disturbing her sleeping lover too badly. But Liara seems intent on being disturbed, if she's to be made comfortable. “Hey,” Shepard grouses, sitting upright once she’s free. Reaching out, she touches Liara’s head, fingers brushing across the band of pale speckles framing her brow. She traces the crests back, resting her palm flat on the crown of the asari’s head. “C’mon, sleepyhead.”

Liara’s grunt is muffled in the bedding.

Shepard sighs, observing the damage. It doesn’t take more than the subtle light from the fishtank to show that Liara has managed to tangle one leg in the blankets, keeping the rest pinned beneath her body. Covering her up without moving her seems hopeless.

“Tentacle-head,” Shepard goads sleepily, prodding Liara’s shoulder. Gently, of course.

“‘M not a…”

Shepard sighs as Liara trails off without finishing her sentence. So much for _that_. “Yeah, okay.” Rolling her eyes, Shepard lifts Liara’s arm, intending to hook her own arms beneath Liara’s and drag her toward the head of the bed. “You know, nobody’s this adorable,” she complains, but really, it’s all she can do to keep from laughing at the predicament Liara’s gotten herself into.

“I am,” Liara slurs, lazily shaking her arm free of Shepard’s hold. After a moment, she seems to come to her senses enough to understand that she’s conscious and why, and she moans, tucking her hand underneath her body as she blinks, eyes gleaming in the almost-dark. “Goddess, it’s cold.”

“ _There’s_ my little blue snoozer,” Shepard teases. Then, projecting her voice a little more, she adds: “EDI, bump the heat up for a few minutes, will you? Not much.”

_‘I will increase cabin temperature until Dr. T’soni’s vital signs indicate that she is comfortable.’_

Finally cognizant of her surroundings, Liara shifts towards the pillows on her elbows, but pauses in the movement after EDI speaks. “I’d rather you not monitor anything right now, EDI.”

_‘I am constantly monitoring - ’_

Shepard stifles a laugh at the sleepily horrified look on Liara’s face in profile. “EDI,” Liara warns.

_‘Would you like me to play back audio of your snoring? It was very impressive.’_

“I - ” Liara pauses, and Shepard finds herself wishing it were always so easy to ruffle Liara’s feathers, if only for the adorable fluster. “I do not snore!”

 _‘It was a joke. I will increase cabin temperature for_ a few minutes _and then return it to preset temperature.’_

Shepard can’t contain her laughter anymore by the end of the exchange, but she does manage a quick “thanks, EDI,” while Liara recovers herself enough to struggle with the blankets. “You know she’s gonna up the temperature for precisely three minutes, Li?”

“Hmph.”

Instead of helping, Shepard watches, chuckling. Liara is either deaf to the laughter in her muddled state, or choosing to ignore it.

“Who’s idea was this?” Liara asks after a moment, huffing out a relieved breath as she pulls the blankets up to her chin at last.

Shepard cozies down beside her, leaning in for a kiss without preamble. For all her show of annoyance, Liara tilts her chin into the quick kiss, prolonging it for half a heartbeat of almost absent-minded affection.

“Don’t look at me,” she says innocently. “When I fell asleep, you were using my shoulder as a pillow. Woke up on my stomach, and you were down there.”

“Well then, I suppose you shouldn’t have moved,” Liara says, a playful tone returning to her voice.

“Or maybe you should’ve found a better pillow.”

“Maybe,” replies Liara in an intentionally non-committal tone, sniffing a little. “ _Goddess_ , my fingers are freezing!”

“Hm,” Shepard muses, reaching for Liara’s hand. “Cold hands go here,” she finishes, placing Liara’s hand unceremoniously beneath her own arm in a bout if playfulness. It’s all she can do not to push it away again when she finds that the asari’s hands really are like ice. “Shit. You weren’t kidding.”

Liara giggles helplessly at the reaction, pressing her fingertips into Shepard’s ribs and scooting closer. “I warned you.”

“Yeah, well, you’d be warm by now if you didn’t sleep like a rock,” Shepard teases, resettling Liara’s hand in spite of the coolness of the touch. “You made a good show of wanting to stay cold.”

“Yes. Well, I can’t help it if your mind is an exhausting place to be.”

It's true that sex almost invariably puts Liara to sleep, for whatever period of time, and Shepard doesn't have to have it repeated that melding with a human is tiring. This doesn't stop it being a source of amusement for her human lover. “Try living in it!” laughs Shepard.

Liara presses her fingertips a little more firmly into Shepard’s side, quick with a good-natured retort of her own. “Try scaling all those walls every time you want to make love to someone!”

Shepard drags the blankets up and over their heads. Craning her neck, she nuzzles her way in to press a kiss to Liara’s throat. “We could always try it the old fashioned way,” she suggests jokingly, enjoying the press of skin, her own still flushed and warm from laying on her stomach, Liara’s cool to touch but warming against her. The hum of the fish tank is more distant, muffled, and they are in their own, private little world of warmth and touch.

Liara snorts. “I think our definitions of ‘old fashioned’ would be very different.”

“Guess you’re right.” The darkness under the blankets is a perfect excuse to shower Liara with a few more kisses on jaw, cheek, and chin, finally ending at her mouth. “That leaves just one option,” she says in pauses between the playful caresses. “No more sex.”

“You might be right,” Liara says in a voice that’s almost too grave to be joking, but when Shepard grumbles, she giggles again. “But I think I like the exercise.”

“Good,” Shepard growls.

Liara has a new reason to shiver when Shepard breathes against her neck again. “Not now, though,” she sighs, freeing her hand. Her fingers make a similar blind and searching journey, brushing Shepard’s collarbone, her neck, her ear, and finally stroking her jaw with the delicate touch Shepard has come to associate only with Liara. “Too tired. And you haven’t been sleeping anyway.”

Shepard snorts. “Speak for yourself, Broker.”

“ _Shepard._ ”

“Right.” Shepard tilts her head and presses a kiss into Liara’s palm, then cups her cheek and kisses her lips - first soundly, then lightly. “Go back to sleep, tentacle-head.”

Liara’s sunk so languorously into the pillows that she can’t even be properly outraged by the nickname. “You mean I wasn’t dreaming that you called me that?”

“Nope.”

“I’m not - ”

“Yeah you are,” the commander says stubbornly, pressing countless soft kisses to her lover’s lips. “I’ll think of better names later.”

“I was always fond of Liara, myself.”

“Boring. Too much like - oh, right. _Liara_.”

“Hmph.”

Satisfied that she’s done enough antagonizing for one night, Shepard lets her laugh die off with another kiss. “Alright,” she finally says, pulling away just a little. “Roll over and we’ll make sure your blue butt stays warm.”

Liara shakes her head in confusion, nose brushing Shepard’s with the movement. “Shepard, my _butt_ is not really - ” At Shepard’s renewed laugh, louder than before, she sighs. “Right. Not literally.”

“Well, I mean yeah, literally too,” Shepard teases, pretending to ignore, but really relishing the dramatic and world-weary sigh as she emerges a bit from the blankets.

Liara rolls over, agreeable to the change, and Shepard fists her hand in the blankets, drawing them in close to Liara’s body. It takes a minute to adjust, laying with her nose to Liara’s shoulder and her own arm atop the blankets, pinning them close to Liara’s chest.

“We good?” she asks once they’re settled, kissing the base of Liara’s neck softly, body comfortably flush against her back.

“Perfect.”

“Butt’s warm?” she can't resist asking in her most ingratiating tone.

“ _Shepard._ ”

She laughs, satisfied, and scrapes her teeth gently across Liara's shoulder. The asari shivers against her. 

“If you don't stop that, you'll be in stasis until I fall asleep.”

“You wouldn't,” Shepard growls in the same playful obstinance. “Payback’s a _bosh’tet_.”

“Come now, Shepard. No one wants a war on this ship,” Liara says smoothly. “Besides, I would win, and the galaxy needs you. Or so I’ve heard.”

“You’d win, huh?”

“I believe there’s an old human saying… ‘Behind every great commander is an asari waiting to kick her into shape if she does something stupid.’”

“Not quite.”

“No?”

“It’s ‘a beautiful, freckled, intelligent,’” she starts in playful earnest, kissing Liara’s back between each descriptor, “‘gorgeous, talented, tentacled, insanely biotically gifted asari’,” she finally finishes, relishing the feeling of Liara’s quiet laughter against her body.

“Well, you are human,” Liara finally concedes. “I suppose you know better.”

“Tell you what. While you sleep, can I use your terminals? I need to find out who my asari is.”

“Oh.” It’s a breathy, good-humored challenge. “So you think you’re great now?”

“You said yourself the galaxy needs me.”

“Yes, well, the galaxy has been known to have very bad taste.”

Shepard laughs quietly, tilting her brow into Liara’s neck. Liara’s hum of approval echoes through her body. “You’re right,” she says, basking in their laughter and stillness and the energy between them.

Liara’s quiet for so long in the wake of that playful concession that, at first, Shepard thinks she’s sleeping. She contents herself with the thought of sleep too, timing her breaths to match Liara’s.

After a span, Liara shifts, sighing contentedly. “I love you.”

Nuzzling her shoulder, Shepard tightens her arm against Liara’s body for a brief moment. “I love you too.”

Quietly, so quietly Shepard almost doesn’t hear her, Liara says: “I’m glad.”


End file.
